THE SECRET CITY OF THE SEMINOLES
The flight in the _Anclote_ to the swamp land for a glimpse of the
famed Everglades and a possible sight of the Secret City of the
Seminoles (an excursion which nearly ended with a fatality) began at
seven o’clock in the morning. The only clue to the location of the
mythical town was a vague reference to it in a little paper bound book,
written by an old alligator and egret hunter, entitled “Thirty Years
in the Everglades.” In this, the writer did not claim to have seen
the fabled town, but he quoted old Billy Bowlegs――a well known modern
Seminole――as authority for the statement that such a place existed.
According to the veteran hunter, the city should be due east of present
St. Petersburgh, a town on the southern tip of Tampa Peninsula, and
north of Lake Istokpoga; “two days’ travel,” as described by the
Indian. This, in the swamps, meant about ten miles. Mapped on their
charts, the two boys laid out a course east-south-east of their camp on
the Key, and estimated the distance at ninety-five miles.
With gasoline sufficient for a two hundred and fifty-mile flight, the
aeroplane was over Tarpon Springs in fifteen minutes, and then, rising
to nearly 1,000 feet, began its cross country flight. For nearly a half
hour, fruit orchards and truck farms indicated civilization, and then
the rough palmetto scrub and sparse pine lands began to tell of the
wilderness. Already deer were plentiful. An hour after the start, the
airship still high and the engine working perfectly, the myriad small
lakes and creeks began to disappear in a lower swamp land.
In this, the dark green of cabbage and fan palmettoes and stunted
pines, suddenly changed to a darker expanse of vegetation. Out of a
prairie of tall swamp grass, rose oaks and taller pines draped with
fantastic garlands of waving Spanish moss. Then this changed to a new
and dense wilderness of tangled oaks, palmettoes and pines seemingly
bound together with interminable bands of the melancholy moss.
Out of this silent chaos, reaching eastward as far as the eye could
see, rose the tall, black spars of blasted oaks with eagles’ nests here
and there, and always the ghostly moss.
“It’s as bad as flying at sea,” remarked Bob. “You might come up out
of the water, but a punch from one of those old snags, and it’s all
off.”
At times, as the _Anclote_ held her course east-south-east, the trees
thinned and a glimpse of the morass beneath met the eye. Some of these
openings revealed ponds and even lakes. But the water was no longer
blue or silvery. It lay glistening black like broken coal. Sighting one
of these buried lakes, Bob swept the machine lower to have a closer
view. As the whirr of the propellers came echoing back with a hollow,
drum-like sound, a flock of snow white herons rose from an island of
rotting logs.
“See him?” exclaimed Tom.
“’Bout fifteen feet long,” answered Bob.
The shrill cries of the startled birds had aroused a monster alligator,
sunning himself high on the logs. With hardly a sound, he slid
backwards into the ebony-colored pool.
The herons, their crane-like legs trailing behind them, flapped their
way eastward. Some miles ahead, Bob slowing up on another spiral mount,
the snow white birds disappeared.
“Somethin’ theah,” suggested Tom. “Let’s have a look.”
The aeroplane had been in the air nearly two hours. The retreat of the
herons was something――the first sight of it was even startling. Here
was another lake, but it was much larger――even a mile in diameter, and,
by some strange freak of nature, of crystal clearness. A creek emptied
into its sparkling waters and another led away southward through the
wall of tangled, moss-draped palmettoes, grass and dead pines. About
the little lake, there was an open shore of sand, so light in color as
to be almost white, apparently packed into a firm grassless beach by
the rising and falling lake.
“That’s something,” exclaimed Bob, attempting to relax his straining
muscles. “We could land on that if it was restin’ time.”
But they had not yet covered their ninety-five miles. Tom carefully
keeping note of the flying minutes and the anemometer for the speed,
had just calculated that they advanced in one hour and fifty-five
minutes nearly seventy-six miles, for, part of the time, the more and
more confident Bob had speeded up to the limit, once reaching a rate of
forty-three miles an hour.
“We’ll go ahead twenty miles,” suggested Bob. “If nothing turns up,
we’ll come back this far, stop for a few hours’ rest and lunch, and
then call it quits, and hike home.”
“What we’ve seen already is worth the trip,” added Tom enthusiastically.
Old Billy Bowlegs must have had a poor sense of location. Twelve
minutes later, the _Anclote_, soaring not over three hundred feet above
the gray and black swamp, passed, without a sign to indicate it, a
deep, clean-cut opening in the trees. It was almost like a well. At the
bottom of it, on a treeless island, seven or eight ruined sheds caught
the quick eyes of the young aviators. There was only time to note this,
to detect human beings here and there, and to see that a wide, black
canal surrounded the habited retreat, and the darting aeroplane closed
the view.
“There――” began Tom, striving to turn for another look.
“Here――” exclaimed Bob, in turn.
Within a half mile of the tree encircled swamp island, rose a treeless
mound. Bob intuitively slowed down the airship with a circling swing.
As the peculiar elevation swept under the machine, it could be seen
that the top of it was green with corn and beds of vegetables.
“That’s their garden,” shouted Tom. “There must be a way to get to it.
There is――see the canal?”
Both boys instantly made out two Indians just landing from a canoe
or pirogue in the swamp at the foot of the hill. Behind them, a dark
colored creek or canal disappeared within the mossy oaks. The tilted
aeroplane had come about in her course and was circling over the
flat-topped hill like a lazy bird.
“We can’t land there,” announced Bob. “The ground is too soft to give
us a starting run.”
“We’ve got to,” replied Tom, with determination. “It’s no good just
seen’ it. I want to know. _I’ve got to know_,” he added, “if I’m goin’
to write about it.”
Bob knit his brows. “We can’t stop,” he repeated. Then he hesitated.
“Are you afraid to meet those people alone?”
“I don’t know why I should be,” answered Tom. “They look like farmahs.
Scalpin’ days are ovah, anyway, I reckon.”
“Then,” added Bob quickly, “take the camera――you’ve got the
revolver――and I’ll make a sweep down near the ground. Drop off. In an
hour, I’ll come back and pick you up――the same way.”
“It’ll be all right, will it?” exclaimed Tom. “I mean, it won’t hurt
the machine?”
“I’ll have something to help you when I come back,” answered Bob. “Just
use your nerve. It’ll be all right. It’s _your_ ‘Secret City,’ or I’d
do it. We can’t both do it.”
“Come back?” exclaimed Tom. “Where are you goin’?”
“Back to Sand Beach Lake,” announced Bob. “It’ll give me a rest, and
give you time to investigate. But be ready――in an hour.”
“Drop her down,” said Tom curtly looking at his watch. “It’s twenty-six
minutes after nine o’clock.”
In another moment, Tom Allen, his camera still oscillating from his
drop from the aeroplane as it darted low over the Indian cornfield, was
watching the _Anclote’s_ swift rise and flight over the trees to the
northwest.
Bob reached the lake, selected the widest and best beach and made an
easy landing. For a few minutes, he exercised his benumbed limbs with a
stroll on the hard sand, then refilled his supply tank, looked over the
engine, oiled it, and at last, began work on the “something to help”
Tom, the marooned aviator.
This was nothing less than a single rung swinging ladder, the
advantage of which, in picking up his companion, was apparent. It
required but a few minutes’ work. The cords were extra strength,
flexible, rewound bracing wire from the supply kit and the rung was a
strong, round piece of pine from a live tree, which was laboriously
hacked out with his pocket knife, thoroughly tested and then scraped
smooth.
Timing himself carefully, Bob was in the air again twelve minutes
before the hour expired. With eyes alert, he fixed his gaze on the
big clearing of the garden mound and made ready for the ordeal of
recovering his companion. With his thoughts on the crucial experiment,
Bob gave little heed to anything else. He was just about to swerve on a
long curve to pick up the waiting Tom on a return slant when a distant
explosion startled him. It was from the vicinity of the concealed
settlement. One glance threw the already nervous Bob almost into chill.
Clinging to the broken forks of a dead oak, just on the edge of the
“well,” was some one waving his arms. At the same moment, the startled
Bob heard a desperate yell. It could be no one but his companion. But
why had he failed to return to the open field?
In a flash, Bob understood. The shot, the waving arm, the call meant
only one thing――danger and the need of rescue. Perched on the blackened
forks stood the yelling figure. With the wild possibility of a mid-air
rescue gripping his brain, the cool-headed aviator pulled his levers
and, cold with apprehension, curved the aeroplane toward the towering
tree. He could do no more. There was but one way he could help the boy
perched on the dead branches.
To bring the swinging ladder squarely within reach was Bob’s task. Tom
must do the rest. If he missed the ladder, it would undoubtedly mean
death in the pathless swamp, from which not even his body might be
recovered. With his eyes on the now unmoving figure, the boy on the
tree became to the tense Bob no more than the bull’s eye of a target.
Just over it, he aimed his craft, his lips set and his grip fixed like
steel upon the levers.
Larger and larger grew the figure――one glance only, and the unmoving
operator saw Tom, white of face and poised, his body rising upright as
if ready to hurl itself far from its support. Then Bob’s every thought
flew to his levers and his steadying grip. He could not look. Had he
missed his human target? His head hit his chest with a sudden shock.
As if in ruinous collision, the framework of the aeroplane groaned,
creaked and shook. The car, lunging downward, careened and then righted.
Bob felt a second shock and the explosive groan of supreme effort. A
swinging leg swept into view in front of the car――another panting groan
and then, venturing his first glance, the desperate operator made out
the white-faced Tom, with one leg over the rung of the hanging ladder,
just pulling himself up to safety on the rung.
“Stay where you are,” whispered Bob hoarsely. “Don’t try to get up
here. I’ll land at the lake.”
The _Anclote_ was already on her way to the landing beach. For several
minutes no sound came from below except the labored breathing of the
rescued boy. Bob looked again. Tom, seated on the ladder cross bar,
with his hands gripped on the light wires, had his eyes closed. His
face was blue-white and he was trembling in all his limbs. His cap,
coat, camera, revolver and shoes were gone.
“A few minutes more, old boy,” called out Bob, “and we’ll be on the
ground.”
“I’m――all right――” came back slowly.
“Sure you are!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re nearly there. Hold on.”
Tom may have been all right, but how he held on, neither he nor Bob
could ever tell. The moment, the aeroplane lit on the white border of
Crystal Lake, the boy on the ladder toppled from his nerve racking
perch and for a quarter of an hour, knew nothing.
But, about eleven o’clock, the hatless, shoeless Tom began to be
himself again. By noon, luncheon disposed of, his spirits were nearly
normal. What had happened to him he told in these words:
“In the first place, the two Indians we saw gettin’ out of the boat
jumped in it right away and disappeared in the trees――up the canal. I
was stumped. But when I got down to the bottom of the mound, I found
anothah boat――cut out of a log and half full of watah. I pulled her
out, baled her, and with a pole that was lyin’ in her started up the
creek or canal.
“It was as dismal a lane as you evah traveled. Nothin’ but tangled
marsh and walls o’ moss on both sides, and so chuck full o’ little
’gatahs an’ cotton mouth snakes I was sort afraid they’d push a hole in
the bottom o’ the boat. But it wasn’t far, not ovah a half a mile, an’
I came to light again――the island an’ the shacks.
“The canal, which is theah road, ran ’round the whole place an’ then
ran away on the othah side into the swamp again. I was tired o’ lookin’
at them glassy-eyed cotton mouth reptiles, and, pushin’ the canoe up to
a sort of a landin’ where I saw the boat the two Indians had used, I
jumped out.
“I was sort o’ scared, too, but I just had a hunch to go ahead. For
a minute, I saw people rushin’ ’round among the shacks on the high
ground, and then, when I got to the top, they’d all disappeared. There
was a noise on the othah side o’ the slope. When I got so I could look
down theah, three canoe loads of Indians were just disappearin’ in the
canal that ran off in that direction into the swamp.
“That seemed pretty good. At least, it saved me the trouble o’ fussin’
with ’em if they didn’t like me. An’ I felt like laughin’. I sta’ted
back to the sheds and then, all of a sudden, I had an idea. I turned
around and had anothah look. I guessed right. They hadn’t left a single
boat. ‘That’s all right,’ I said to myself, ‘I’ll go back the way I
came.’ And then, with no one to disturb me, I set about seein’ what a
‘Secret City o’ the Seminoles’ was like.
“It won’t take long to tell. It wasn’t much. The shacks were of pine
trees, split, and you can bet I didn’t bother the insides o’ them. They
were the filthiest holes I evah looked into. Some of ’em had grass
hammocks an’ that was about all except piles o’ deer skins, gourds,
a few tools o’ bone and wood, some old bows and long wicked lookin’
arrows. The cookin’ places were outside the houses, but theah weren’t
any iron pots or pans. Theah was one oven made out of a kind of ground
shell an’ a big wooden trough, an’ a club to mash co’n.
“But it’s a cinch they didn’t come theah yesterday. The top o’ that
island was packed as ha’d as a street. An’ all ’round the edge o’ the
ha’d paht there were places wheah othah shacks had stood. Between these
and the canal――talk about your dirty alleys! Down neah the watah, you
could walk on bones――mostly they seemed alligatah bones. Ain’t no
doubt,” continued Tom in a pitying voice, “that tribe or paht of a
tribe, lives on alligatahs.”
“Maybe snakes,” suggested Bob.
“Don’t you believe they eat snakes,” exclaimed Tom. “Wait till I tell
you. Anyway, it was the dirtiest, creepiest, darkest, lonesomest
place, I was evah in. What began to give me the real shivahs was what I
saw mongst those ’gatah skeletons. If I saw one, I saw a hundred great
big, fat rattlahs, and every one a diamond back. Well, they wasn’t
botherin’ me, so I began takin’ pictahs. I took ’em in all directions.
Then I went back up into the ‘city.’ Theah I come on what started old
‘Billy Bowlegs’ story――the ‘Sacred Alligatah.’”